


The Dreaming of Philippe de Chagny

by ponderinfrustration



Series: the rifle cares not [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Irish War of Independence, Angst, Blood, Brotherhood, Execution, F/M, Funeral, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Multi, Murder, Needles, OT3, bones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 09:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23348992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: 27 March 1921. Philippe de Chagny, Irish Republican, sits at his brother's bedside, and thinks of how he has come to be here.01 March 1965, Raoul de Chagny stands in a graveyard at a much-delayed funeral, and remembers.
Relationships: Comte Philippe de Chagny/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Comte Philippe de Chagny/Erik | Phantom of the Opera/La Sorelli, Comte Philippe de Chagny/La Sorelli, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Series: the rifle cares not [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707319
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Philippe

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains references to historical figures and events, treats Roger Casement's Black Diaries which contain evidence of his homosexuality as authentic, includes references to execution by hanging and how such was historically carried out in the British context, historically-accurate anti-English sentiment, and some reference to medical procedures including needles.
> 
> Cathleen ní Houlihan is a personification of Ireland found in nationalist literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries and also the title of a play by W.B. Yeats.

He has seen death, of course. Seen it, and held it, touched it, tasted it (the blood from his bitten lip salty and hot when the bullet tore through his arm; dust in the air dry in his throat, cordite on the back of his tongue; the quinine sharp as he swallowed it and gagged.)

He has seen death. Has seen _bodies_. Bodies in his own home (mother, father), bodies in the Congo (so many of them, so many, imprinted on the backs of his eyes), bodies on the streets of Dublin (blood trickling between the cracks of the cobblestones, cries and shouts and screams, the dust heavy in the air, the revolver in his pocket burning, burning.)

He has pictured _that_ body. That body, left to dangle for an hour, customary practice, to ensure that death truly has taken place. Pictured it, and tried not to picture it, though his mind insists on conjuring the image sometimes, in the depths of the night.

(Ought he have gone to London? Not that he could have been there, but to have been in London…)

He has never attended a hanging. If he had headed for the States instead of the Congo probably he might have. The Americans always favour their own fashion for doing things, as is their right as their own nation, but that particular penchant for public execution is not something he has any taste for. So he has never seen a hanging but he made a study of it, that summer when _treason_ and the weight of it was something he had spent months shaping his tongue around.

(The trap door, the measured long drop, based on height and weight and build, knot positioned under the left ear to knock the head back and snap the neck.)

(That tightness in his chest each time his thoughts go there. _Breathe, Philippe, breathe_.)

Judicial hanging. Better or worse than being stood against a wall and shot? Or merely different?

Tidier. No blood in the dust. The hole and the quicklime just the same.

(The tolling of bells makes him shiver.)

Bodies seen, bodies imagined. Pale faces, and still fingers, cold beneath his touch.

He is under no illusion how fortunate he is that Raoul’s body was not among them.

God but if he ever finds the men that did it—If he ever finds them they’ll wish—they’ll plead—they’ll—

Raoul’s fingers stir in his, slim and frail and he swallows, swallows and forces himself to draw a deep breath, and swallows again.

 _Tuck it away, tuck it away, what you will do to those men._ They will have to wait, finding them, killing them. _Those Tan English bastards what right have they to come in here? What right have they to come in here and shoot your brother?_

That voice in his ear but nobody here, nobody here, only him, Christine and Sorelli in the other room and Erik outside somewhere, and Raoul here in this bed, Raoul sleeping quietly, his arm strapped to his chest.

Raoul. His little brother, his baby brother, and they _shot_ him.

The tears burn his eyes, blur his vision, but he will not wipe them away, cannot bring himself to. Why should he? How can he? His little brother. His little brother, only seventeen, a _boy_ , and they _shot_ him.

They call themselves men, call themselves soldiers, but if they were men they would not break into houses and shoot boys.

* * *

1903\. He was only just back from the Congo. Twenty-two and it felt like he had seen enough of man’s cruelty to man to last him a lifetime. Casement was dashing off letters demanding his report into the Belgian atrocities be published without any of this _waiting_ , that there were people _dying_ , and the telegram came on a cold morning in November, to re-call Philippe to Dublin.

His father, telling him that his mother was ill, gravely so. That the baby was not due for three weeks but he had come early, and Philippe held the paper trembling in his hand, and read the words to try and make them make sense.

His mother ill (dying). And a baby brother, tiny and premature and unlikely to live.

He legs were so weak he very nearly fainted.

(Casement got him to a chair, and loosened his collar, and made him drink brandy and smoke two cigarettes, offered him quinine but he shook his head, whispered he couldn’t, and Casement made the arrangements for him to go home while his head was still spinning.)

He thinks it was a peaceful crossing of the Irish Sea, but he has no memory of it beyond looking out on the grey water, as if he were hovering somewhere outside of his body.

He arrived in Dublin, arrived home, just in time to kiss his mother’s cheek and hold her hand as she died.

The first time he held the baby, this baby that was his brother when he had thought to be an only child all his life (this baby a miracle when there had been miscarriages all through his youth, when his mother had died to have this child), something pulled inside of him, pulled and wrapped itself around this tiny boy, asleep in his arms, with the most delicate lashes, and a snub nose, and the smallest most perfectly formed little fingers he had ever seen in his life.

He bowed his head and kissed that forehead, kissed those tiny fingers, and knew he would do anything, anything, to keep this tiny brother safe and well.

* * *

Raoul. Because their mother had wanted it, after her dead brother.

Raoul Anthony De Chagny.

The priest baptised him there in Philippe’s arms, because their father was with the doctor, and the baby was surely to die, just a matter of time.

But De Chagnys have always been tougher than they look.

(If there is anything Philippe has ever been grateful for in his life, it has been that above all else.)

* * *

Raoul’s blood is dry on his trousers, on his shirt, traces of it still staining beneath his nails four days later. He should change his clothes, he knows, should change and scrub his hands again, but his gaze keeps drifting from Raoul’s pale sleeping face to those flakes of dry blood, and he cannot bring himself to move. What if Raoul woke when he was gone? Woke and panicked to find him missing?

How could he inflict that on him, after all he’s been through?

(In the depths of his fever, half-blinded with the blood loss, with the burning in his skin, the shock of the wound, the morphine, he kept asking for him, calling, “Philippe...Philippe…Philippe…” and it didn’t matter that Philippe was right beside him, squeezing his hand and stroking his hair and whispering to him, low in his ear, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere…” the tears still welled in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose and it was all Philippe could do to keep his own tears at bay. When he at last quieted, it was mostly that he had worn himself out.)

No. Better to stay here, as long as he can, and keep Raoul from being frightened.

He never did like being alone in the dark.

* * *

Philippe had the perfect alibi when they were arresting men over the Rising. He had been in hospital, with Raoul, who had been dreadfully sick and who had just had his appendix out. He had gotten the countermanding order from MacNeill, that there was to be no rising, and he had no intention of leaving Raoul alone in such a place. There were any number of doctors and nurses to say that’s exactly where he stayed, with his little twelve year old brother, holding his hand and making up stories to tell him so he wouldn’t be frightened, and plastering a smile on his face every time the boy woke.

The only place he could bear to be, when the shooting started.

(If he had not been there beside him, Raoul would only have been frightened for him.)

(If he had not been there beside him, if he had gone out to fight, he might have found himself executed too.)

* * *

He could not go to see Erik in the hospital in May 1916, because Erik was under an armed guard. The Sherwood Foresters keeping an eye on him night and day, after he was shot in a house on Northumberland Road. They had not thought he would live but they arrested him anyway, and allowed him to be treated only so he could be alive for execution.

The fourteen men they shot in Kilmainham—God but how the memory of it chills Philippe’s blood. Connolly, strapped to a chair with his shattered ankle. Who had the job of untying him when he was already dead? Plunkett, newly married, his throat still bandaged from the operation for his tuberculosis, that he left his sickbed after to go to the GPO and fight. MacDiarmada, and he could hardly stand with what polio had done to his legs, could hardly have fired a shot at any man, but they shot him anyway. MacBride, who had not known it had been planned but who met McDonagh in the street that day in his uniform, and joined on the spot. Willie Pearse, who stood and fought and was executed mostly because he was Pádraig’s brother.

Philippe has always been keenly aware of how his actions could lead Raoul into trouble through no fault of his own.

Markievicz was spared by virtue of being a woman, that brave and wonderful Countess with her pistols and feathered hat. De Valera, and his American birth pushed him down the list enough that he was spared when the executions were stopped. (Stopped, but they called what Casement did high treason and sent him to England, and when it was a _trial_ and _high treason_ , not a court martial over the Rising, they could hang him with their consciences clear.)

Erik, too ill from the bullet in his chest to be brought to Kilmainham and shot so the reprieve came in time to save him, too, and when he was well enough they shipped him to Frongoch instead.

And Philippe could not go to see him in the hospital, or they might have arrested him too, and he would not have cared, then, but for what could have become of Raoul, and they needed a man on the outside, needed someone still free.

So it was only afterwards, long afterwards, after the Rising and after Frongoch and in that long summer of 1918 when the war was inching close to its end, that he and Erik realised they had loved each other, in a distant sort of way, for a very long time.

(Late August, the sun on their skin, the grass grown long and white, Erik’s hand cupping the back of his neck, Erik’s lips upon his own.)

* * *

He slept last night with his head on the pillow beside Raoul’s, careful not to wake him, or jar him. His fever had finally broken, and the relief of it was enough that Philippe had wept, there in Erik’s arms, as Erik held him close and pressed his face into his hair, and didn’t tell him that it was all right now, didn’t tell him that Raoul would be fine, didn’t say anything at all, just held him and let him cry, the tears of three days without sleep, three days of fear that Raoul would die beneath his hands, or the Tans would come back and try to finish the job and he’d have to shoot them and then run for his life and not know if Raoul would live or die.

When he had cried himself out, Erik kissed his forehead, sat him down and made him drink brandy for the sake of his nerves while Sorelli was brewing tea.

(He almost asked for quinine, but it is years since he has taken any, his malaria fevers long passed, and he would not know where to find it.)

He has loved Erik for years, loved him since their days in Conradh na Gaeilge before the war, before the Rising, before any of it even though he didn’t know it then. He only came to understand that on that evening when they first kissed. But for all the years of loving Erik, he never loved him more than that moment when Erik sat him down and squeezed his hands, and bid him see how peacefully Raoul was sleeping.

The rush of love inside of him made his eyes water.

* * *

He loved men before Erik, of course. Loved men, loved boys when he was a boy himself, before he knew he loved them, when slipping into each other’s beds in the quiet of the dormitory at night was secret illicit fun, hands gentle and fumbling on each other. Fourteen and fifteen years old, and girls were pretty but still unattainable, and there were none at school anyway. And they were learning what it was to have these urges, these feelings, these desires, and half-giggling little gasps in the darkness were nothing new. They were all acquainted with their own hands. To become acquainted with _another’s_ hands, even when that other was another boy, was something _more_.

It was only afterwards, only in the Congo with the benefit of years and hindsight, that he realised he had loved Andrew his best friend in a way that was not merely friendship, and if he had known then what he had come to know, had come to understand about himself, he would have kissed him.

(And likely it would not have been appreciated because the informality of hands was one thing but mouths were another, yet still a part of him regretted not having done it, a part of him that ached for Andrew to still be in his life.)

After school there had been George in London, and still he pretended to himself that it was nothing more serious than a friend helping a friend. And besides, there had been Anna, and Catherine, and Vera, and Elizabeth too, and their kisses left him aching for more, but they were proper girls, like he was a proper boy, a proper young gentleman, so it could only be kisses and nothing more.

It was Casement who turned his world upside down. Casement, in Madeira, in Loanda, in Boma, in places without names. Casement, who showed him what it was to _want,_ to _need_ , to _feel_. Casement, and the spark bright in his eye, his smile, who taught him what it could really be to have a lover.

He supposes, in hindsight, it could have been no other way.

* * *

They said all those things around the time of the trial, all those whispers of rumours. Diaries and letters, but they never followed any initials back to him, and if they had he would have denied it, would have protected Casement and all he stood for from those two terrible words, _gross indecency_.

To take something wonderful and paint it in such terms, as if it were a crime, a sin, to be happy for a little while. As if it were unnatural to feel something like peace.

(To reveal a man’s innermost being in an attempt to shame him, to ruin him—It makes Philippe’s blood burn to think of what they did to him, what they tried to do.)

No matter how true it was, it was not his place to spill another man’s secrets.

And he would never betray him when it was exactly what the English wanted him to do.

* * *

(He still has every letter Casement ever wrote him, hundreds of them, hidden safe away. And the very last one, three days before they killed him, is hidden safest of all. 31 July 1916.)

(He has his own letters too, unsent, from After. Because he needed to write, needed to try to put shape on this thing beneath his ribs, this ache, this grief. Every one of them is addressed to Roddie, but he cannot use that name anymore, cannot bear the feel of it on his tongue, in his head. Within one short assembly of letters there are far too many things that can never be given form.)

* * *

What would he have done, if that bullet had taken Raoul’s life?

What could he have done?

* * *

Raoul’s fingers are soft and cool against his lips. He is doing nothing here, nothing, except being. But there is something comforting in watching his brother sleep, something beyond words, beyond any sort of expression. Just listening to each breath, so soft, watching the throbbing of his pulse in his throat, the slight shiftings of his face, the delicate shadows cast by his lashes. His hair is still a little damp from the sweat, blond curls stuck to his forehead like when he was a boy, and gently Philippe brushes them away, tucks one stray lock behind his ear. He has always preferred wearing his hair a little long, always resented getting it cut for school and Philippe would have been happy to let it grow its golden curls but he was afraid of what people might say, that people might think he wasn’t taking good enough care of his brother. So he insisted on keeping it trimmed and tidy and Raoul grumbled about it, but since he decided to leave school, since they fought over that and Raoul put his foot down and insisted he could not abide the other boys, not with the things they were saying about Philippe, that he wouldn’t fight but he wouldn’t go back to school either, since that day he hasn’t cut his hair, not a single snip.

Philippe can’t blame him, really, about not wanting to go back. They can see about his exams when this is all over. What are exams, really, when this is being part of history? When this is freeing their country, piece by piece? And the hair, well, it’s as good a disguise as any. Almost as good as growing a beard, or shaving one off.

God but Raoul hasn’t even started to _shave_ yet.

Something about that thought makes Philippe’s heart falter.

* * *

He left the room earlier, just for a few minutes. He was lightheaded and a little faint, and he needed the air to revive himself, so Christine took his place at Raoul’s side and he stepped outside.

A cool afternoon, just a little hazy, deceptively pleasant for late March as if the worst of the winter might be over and summer just around the corner, and he found himself staring at the purple flowers by the wall, staring, and not really thinking at all.

Tired. Too tired, couldn’t remember the name of them, only that they were delicate and purple. And somehow the Tans hadn’t trampled them when they burst in, and the tears welled in his eyes. He couldn’t even explain why. But the flowers were still there and the Tans hadn’t trampled them, not even when they ran after shooting Raoul.

He felt Sorelli’s arms come around him, steady him, and he leaned into her, hardly daring to breathe, in case the tears would come and he would never be able to stop them. But her hand was light on the back of his neck, a gentle pressure, and he swallowed and pressed his face into her hair, and didn’t try to stop them.

* * *

(When the clock struck nine, nine in the morning of 3 August 1916, and 300 miles away across a sea in another city they pulled the trapdoor beneath the finest man who had ever stood in such a place, Philippe fancied he could hear the bells toll the end of his life. He had lain awake all night, all night unable to sleep, and when he heard those bells, even though they were only in his own head, the tears welled in his eyes.)

(Sorelli carded her fingers through his hair, and kissed them away.)

* * *

That that man, that beautiful brave proud man rests in a prison grave in English soil, nameless and unmarked without so much as a flower to acknowledge where he lies, is an affront to all that is good and true.

He had only wanted to break the system, had only wanted to make things right.

Of all the crimes the English have committed, of all the things they’ve done that one burns deep inside Philippe so he can hardly breathe, has burned with a fire all its own for the best part of five years now.

Someday they will bring Casement back, they will take him from that terrible place. Someday, when Ireland is free.

* * *

Sorelli brings him soup, a thin broth that Christine has made, and kisses his hair. She has brought a bowl for Raoul too, for when he wakes again. He needs to eat something for the sake of his strength.

He catches her hand as she moves away, and she looks back at him, a question in her face, and in spite of everything, in spite of the ache in his chest, he manages a smile for her.

“Thank you.”

* * *

Loving men, loving Erik, has never kept him from loving Sorelli. His dear sweet beautiful Sorelli. It was the winter of 1912 when they met, the winter of 1912 the first time she kissed him and lay him down in her bed and she was a proper girl but she was also an actress, and caring what the world thought only mattered to her when it came to the stage. She called herself a woman who loved men, and she loved him and he loved her all the more for the audacity in her eyes and the knife in her boot.

Two knives, one in each boot.

Yeats had Maud Gonne in her unattainable beauty, but he has Sorelli. And it was Casement who first taught him of poetry, but it was Sorelli who gave him something to write for.

Sorelli, and Cathleen ní Houlihan. Their ideal, their Ireland.

And when he thinks of Cathleen, tries to give her – give Ireland – form in his head, it is Sorelli’s face she wears.

They arrested Sorelli after the Rising. Arrested her for having stood beside the Countess in Stephen’s Green, with a pair of his trousers tailored to fit and a revolver at each hip, a cigarette between her lips. He did not see her, could not see her when Raoul needed him, but he can picture her just as clearly as if he had been there, the tilt of her head and defiant line of her jaw, gunsmoke and dust swirling around her.

His beautiful Sorelli, tall and proud and ready to fight.

And she was out by July because they couldn’t keep her, not when the prison guards all fell under her spell, men and women both. The star of the stage. How could a mere prison cell ever hope to contain her?

She came straight to him, after she was released, and what a relief it was to hold her in his arms again, in that summer that seemed so much of death, and feel her lips pressed to the corner of his.

(They have always been careful that there would not be a child. How could they in good conscience bring a life into the world when Ireland remains unfree and either or both of them could be murdered for trying to save her?)

They have rarely been parted. Sometimes that seems like enough.

* * *

The first night he slept in this chair, holding Raoul’s hand as he slept after the doctor attended to his wound, he dozed fitful and she brought a stool for him to prop his legs on, and draped a coat over him, that he would not get cold. He had wanted to stay awake, to keep watch lest Raoul should stop breathing in the night, lest he should wake and need him, but he had given his blood to the doctor to put into Raoul’s veins (thank God the man had been at the war in France, thank God such wounds were something he knew, thank God he was on their side) and he was so tired that he could not keep his eyes open.

But Sorelli came to him, and kissed him, and covered him, and with her lips pressed close to his ear she whispered, “we’ll keep you both safe, I promise.”

He nodded against her, and trusted that she would.

* * *

(There is not a moment that he does not feel how fortunate he is, to be able to love Erik and Sorelli both, and they love him in return, and each other, too. The three of them together, how it should always be.)

* * *

When Raoul wakes he whispers to him, those old stories he learned in summers in Antrim, with Bigger and his neophytes all learning Irish, and Casement when he was there. And Erik.

Queen Maeve. Cúchulainn. The Tuatha Dé Danann. Children of Lir. Fionn and the Fianna. Oisín in Tír na nÓg. Deirdre of the Sorrows.

These old stories, to keep Raoul from trying to speak, that he whispered to him to help him sleep as a little boy. And Raoul watches him with his eyes half-open, his fingers curled around Philippe’s own, and Philippe whispers to him until he falls asleep, one story after another, until his voice fails him again.

(“…glad you’re here…” Raoul murmured, once, and Philippe’s voice cracked and he could not carry on the story, only kiss Raoul’s forehead, and press his face close to him, and whisper, “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”)

* * *

They were coming back from meeting Lynch in the mountains, he and Erik. And it was cool but not yet cold, the weather improved, the evening coming in slow, sun dipping below the horizon. The news was that MacThomáis had been taken, that he had put up a struggle from what they could tell and was probably being tortured. Murray had his boys on it, trying to find him, but there was nothing they could do until they knew more, except try to take more of the Tans and interrogate them. Malley was planning how, and all Philippe and Erik could do was sit tight.

They had come down off the mountain, were picking their way through the rocky fields, not speaking, just occasionally reaching out to steady each other, to feel the brush of the other’s hand, the air cool enough to keep them from sweating. And he could not say what Erik was thinking but what he was thinking was what would happen to Raoul if he should be taken. He would not want his brother to be part of an attempt to rescue him, would want him to leave heroics to Erik and to Sorelli, and Malley and Murray and the boys. For Raoul to stay somewhere safe, stay with Christine. And he was remembering, and trying not to remember, the time Raoul almost drowned.

Only six, slipped and fell into the river, and there was so much blood from where he’d cut his head, and he wasn’t breathing when Philippe pulled him from the water and he was frantic, frantic, rubbing his chest and slapping his back, watching the water that trickled from his mouth, his pale face and blue lips, and Philippe was crying, crying and willing him to breathe, and he gasped, a feeble little gasp, so weak Philippe almost missed it, until he gasped again and moaned and coughed, and Philippe bundled him up and carried him back to the house. He was sick for weeks afterwards, from the cold and the water in his lungs, but he didn’t complain, and Philippe was so frightened, and so proud of his brave little brother, who gave him the weakest smile the first time he woke and that seemed the most brilliant smile Philippe had ever seen.

(Raoul’s nightmares ever since were always of drowning, until they were of shooting, until they were both.)

Philippe resolved to teach him to swim after that, and he wrote Casement about it because Casement was an excellent swimmer, and the letter came all the way from Peru, “My father taught me to swim by throwing me into the water. Might be best to take a different approach.”

The memory of it all was going through his head that evening as he and Erik picked their way through that half-barren landscape towards Christine’s house. The safest house they knew, offered up to them by her because her father had died in Frongoch, wrongfully interned, and she hated the English for it, hated that he should have to lie in foreign soil, that he had been taken from her in such a way. And Christine is only Raoul’s age, but she has been on her own for four years now, and the thought of Raoul being left alone like that—

He refuses to let himself to think of it.

(He suspects that Raoul might be sweet on Christine, and he suspects that she might be sweet on Raoul in turn, and the thought of their innocent love is the brightest spark in these darkest of times.)

He slipped on a rock and Erik steadied him with a hand on his elbow, and that was when they heard the shots.

The shots, coming from the direction of Christine’s house.

* * *

As long as he lives he knows he will never forget the sight of Raoul slumped against Christine on the floor, Sorelli’s hands pressed to that hole beneath his collarbone, the blood so dark spattered on his pale face, on his throat, his head on her shoulder and eyes screwed shut, tears trickling down his cheeks as he gasped, chest heaving, each breath ragged.

The whisper of Erik’s voice behind him, “I’ll go for the doctor.”

Falling to his knees beside Raoul, his shaking hands pushing Sorelli’s out of the way to press into that hole, the blood welling between his fingers, Sorelli getting towels and the blood was so warm, so warm against his skin and there was someone saying something, someone whispering and it was only then he realised it was him, him whispering Raoul’s name over and over, “Raoul Raoul Raoul,” and Raoul’s eyes flickered and opened, so blue in the pale of his face, the blood smeared on his cheek, and he smiled that thin smile he had when he was six, that thin ghost of a smile, and something like a sob caught in Philippe’s throat that he swallowed down.

When Raoul tried to speak, he shushed him.

* * *

They cleared the table and the doctor examined him there. Put him to sleep with his case of drugs and stopped the bleeding and stitched the wound closed. And he didn’t say it, but if the bullet had been over a little more, a little lower—

Philippe squeezed Raoul’s fingers and stripped off his coat, his jacket, his vest, and peeled up his sleeve for the doctor to take his blood.

He felt the pinch of the needle in his arm, the tightness of the tourniquet, but all he could look at was the slackness of Raoul’s face, the rise and fall of his chest.

And all he could think was, _When they write about this they’ll say it was absurd to operate on a boy on Christine Daaé’s kitchen table._ He laughed then, but it wasn’t really laughing, it was weeping, and he turned his head into Sorelli’s chest and she hold him as he shook.

Erik carried Raoul to the bed in Christine’s father’s old room, and when Philippe was steady, he followed.

* * *

How many times did Raoul wake, when he was just a little boy, and couldn’t get back to sleep because the walls were closing in on him? How many times did Philippe wake, when he sensed more than felt the shifting of the bed, felt the little hand on his shoulder shaking him? And the whisper, “can I stay with you?” And he just nodded into the pillow, too groggy to speak, and shifted over, lifted the blankets, and felt that little body press in beside him and cuddle close, the head of curls tucked in under his chin. And he would wrap his arm around Raoul to keep him close and safe, and Raoul would try to wrap his little arm around him to hold on tighter (he must only have been five at the time), and Philippe would whisper, “sleep now,” and Raoul would nod against him, and be out like a light.

He would lie awake, listening to his little brother breathe, and the feeling in his chest was beyond words, just this great swelling love for this little boy who was not supposed to have lived, but who was the most precious person in the world.

He closes his eyes, and listens to those breaths now, soft and slow from the morphine, and knows that for all that has happened, for all that must still happen and what might happen, that he must be the most blessed man in the world.

His brother is alive, is going to live. Right now, what right has he to demand more?

* * *

(He loves Raoul more than words can say, a love engraved deep in his bones, in his blood. Loves Sorelli and Erik equally and holds them in his heart. Loved Casement, once, and it was long in the past already before everything happened, a relic of the Congo in 1903, but there is room inside of him for them all, all of these people who have been the world to him.)

* * *

The Tans mistook Raoul for him, he knows that. They kicked open the door and shot so quick they mistook a seventeen year old boy for an almost-forty year old man.

That Raoul has almost died is his fault.

“The fault of British imperialism,” Erik said, his eyes blazing. But Philippe knows the truth—he could try to free his country, but he could not keep his brother safe.

(Did Pearse feel this way, when he knew he had condemned his brother to death?)

* * *

He put a gun in his brother’s hand and he hates himself for it.

* * *

He did not want Raoul to be part of this, but he knew there was no way to keep him out. He is his brother, and Ireland is his country too, and if he does not survive this war then Raoul is the one who will have to live on in the new world they’re trying to create.

They will create it, they must.

A free Ireland for them all.

The thing he’s dreamed of, since he first heard of 1798.

Since he first heard of his uncle Philip, his father’s brother whose name he wears, hanged for a traitor in 1867.

 _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ , they tell the boys they send off to fight in their wars. But his country is Ireland, and for Ireland and Raoul he will die if he must.

Not sweet or right or good, but his duty.

* * *

Erik kisses him, Sorelli holds him, Christine makes him eat.

Raoul rests, and wakes, and smiles faintly at him, and rests some more.

But he will be all right now. He will be all right.

* * *

If he had gone with Casement to America instead of staying to help bring the guns into Howth…

If he had insisted Pearse take heed and not fight…

If he had stood and fought with them…

If Raoul had not been so sick…

If he had been there at Banna Strand…

If he had been arrested…

If he had gone to London…

If their father had not followed their mother to the grave…

If… If… If…

His life a bundles of “if”s, questions, brought to this room, this chair, this blood beneath his nails, and the bullet that almost killed Raoul.

* * *

He is dozing, dreaming of a white sandy beach, of seagulls and a boy’s laughter when he hears the commotion in the other room.

His hand goes to his gun, his gaze flickers to Raoul and sees he is still asleep, then the voices reach his ears and he breathes deeply.

Malley.

“…found MacThomáis…same shot de Chagny…Lynch wants…”

A lower tone, Erik. Philippe can picture him, the knitted brow, the ravaged half of his face in shadow, can’t make out the words.

Sorelli, “He’ll want to know.”

He already knows. The men who shot Raoul, same as the ones who took MacThomáis. They must have word that he is still alive, when Malley has brought the news himself, and not sent one of Murray’s boys.

A rescue party. He and Erik and Malley. How many times have they done this?

Collins organises the assassinations. They rescue the men who are taken, or shoot them if it is kinder. Working together, they will free a nation.

(Rescue or kindness? Which will this one be?)

He kisses Raoul’s forehead, and releases his hand.

Christine will stay with him until they are back. Sorelli will be ready if the Tans come.

With any luck, he’ll be back before Raoul wakes.


	2. Raoul

He has often wondered how it would have been if their parents had lived. He probably would not have been so close to Philippe. Philippe, the only person he had in his world. His big brother who kept him safe, who made it his duty to see to his every need, that he would always be happy, always be well. Philippe.

Philippe could have handed him off to someone else, some cousin or distant aunt. Spared himself the trouble of looking after a baby brother who had come into his life and thrown everything into disarray. Could have gone off on his adventures, back to the Congo maybe, or to Lisbon, or Brazil, but even thinking it Raoul knows Philippe would never have done it. He cannot imagine him having sought work in the consul’s office, having done anything to help His Majesty’s Government in any way. His desire for Irish freedom was too deep, too much a part of him, for him to have done anything but fight the system.

Besides, he cannot imagine Philippe ever abandoning him. It was not in his brother’s nature. He never once doubted that Philippe would always be there, never once doubted that he would always bring him with him, if he could. If it was safe.

If their parents had lived, maybe Philippe would have fought in the Rising, would have donned his uniform and checked his guns and led men into battle on the streets of Dublin. And maybe they would have arrested him afterwards, and put his name down for execution before they sent him to Frongoch instead.

Or maybe they would have taken him out and shot him like the others.

(Hypothetical as it is, as long ago as it is, Raoul feels ill to think of it.)

It sounds a terrible thing to say, sounds awful, but maybe it was for the best that their parents died when they did. That they could not worry about the things they did, what they got involved with. Better this way, when in 1916, his appendix kept Philippe out of the fighting.

The one time he was able to save his brother.

* * *

He has no doubt that Philippe should be standing here today, and not him. And maybe him too, but only beside his brother. His brother who maybe wouldn’t be able to stand up straight now, if he were here. Who would be bent with age, with old wounds. Or maybe he would be standing prouder than de Valera, his jaw set and firm, the way it only ever got when he was trying to keep himself from crying.

(Raoul remembers that set jaw, hazy through the net of his lashes, in those last days, when he had burned with fever, and was too weak to stay awake.)

Pathetic fallacy they call it, don’t they? When the weather reflects the mood?

That there should be damp sleet today when the last days have been so fine…

It is proper to look at the person who is speaking, he knows. Respectful. It was drilled into him in school. But his eyes keep drifting to the coffin, draped in the tricolour. Such a big coffin when it only contains bones. As if they are all a little bit pretending that forty-nine years have not passed since this funeral should have been held.

A little bit pretending, but how he aches to turn to Philippe, and take his hands, and tell him they’ve finally brought Casement home.

He swallows hard against the tightness in his throat, and leans heavier on Christine’s arm.

* * *

He remembers Casement better than he remembers his father. To be expected, really, when his father is a faint shadow in his memory, with soft hands and smelling of cigar smoke. But he remembers Casement, remembers him coming to see Philippe, this tall man with his beard who seemed all the taller for how small Raoul was. He would come to visit, when he was back from London or Brazil or Peru or wherever he had been, and he and Philippe would shut themselves into Philippe’s study for a long time, and talk so low that Raoul, trying to eavesdrop at the door, couldn’t make out more than snatches of words. But Raoul didn’t mind, because seeing Casement made Philippe so happy, and he knew his brother had been with the man in the Congo.

(The Congo was one of the first places Raoul could pick out on a map, after Ireland, because Philippe would tell him stories about the things he’d seen, the animals, the monkey who would steal glasses of alcohol and get drunk, and Casement’s bulldog John who commandeered the captain’s cabin on the ship and refused to let the man in. Surely the angriest dog who ever existed, but how Raoul loved hearing about him.)

(He always loved when he was allowed to listen in, so long as he stayed quiet on the floor, and he could sit there and listen to them talk for hours, these stories swirling around him, and how grown-up it made him feel.)

The last time Casement came to visit, the summer of 1914, before the gunrunning, before the whole world turned, when he was getting ready to go to America, Raoul remembers Philippe embracing him before he left, and he wonders, now, has wondered a good many times in all the fifty years since, if some part of Philippe knew it would be the last time.

* * *

He made a study of Casement, in 1929. Just for himself, because he felt like he should. He didn’t care about the diaries because he knew them to be true even if nobody else wanted them to be (and although pieces of them have been published he has refused to read them, just like he has refused to read those biographies of the man, except for Monteith’s record of what happened).

Why would he want to read these books when he knows the things they won’t include, and what they will try to deny?

So he made his own study of Casement, and of Philippe. And though it did not ease the ache in his chest for his brother, it did feel like relief.

* * *

Ruairí Ó Dálaigh. The name he used through the civil war, whenever he needed to be someone else for a while. For a time, he had been one of the most wanted men in the country. A dubious honour for someone barely 19 years old.

Ruairí, Irish for Roger, for Casement and Philippe both.

(Philippe had called himself Mac Easmainn, when they were fighting the Tans, when he needed to not be de Chagny, and so it felt right, in the civil war, to use the other half of Casement’s name.)

Ó Dálaigh, Irish for Daly, which sounds just enough like Daaé, the closest he could find. For Christine, his dear lovely Christine, always waiting for him. Always ready.

He would be lost without her.

* * *

He was in the kitchen, in the kitchen of Christine’s little cottage. The evening was closing in, sky salmon-pink and bruised purple, still light to the west. Philippe and Erik would be back soon from meeting Lynch, and Sorelli was in the back room.

Only he and Christine in the kitchen, and he smiled at her. They were at an awkward stage, halfway between friendship and romance, and he was hoping to take them fully to romance, even as he wondered if it was right to become involved with a girl in the middle of a war.

But he loved her. And he knew that with a certainty clearer than almost anything else he had known in his life, and he had to try.

(They say that seventeen year olds can’t fall in love, not really, that they’re too young, but he did and he’s never regretted it. Though he will admit, everything with Christine has always been exceptional.)

“What would you say,” he asked her, in that evening light in her kitchen, “if I asked you if you would be inclined to kiss me?”

She quirked her brow, and smiled at him. “I would say that you were very sure that you had earned it.”

She was very close to him, close enough that he could kiss her if he wanted, and his gaze flicked from her lips to her eyes. “How could I earn it?” he whispered, and her smile was soft, her hand light, brushing his hand.

“Bring me flowers.”

And he nodded, and was about to go to the door to go out and pick those purple flowers by the wall, when the door burst open.

He was falling before he ever heard the shot, before he ever heard the screaming, and the pain that tore through his chest was more than he could breathe around.

He gasped, and tasted blood in his mouth, iron and salt, and felt the drumming of boots.

* * *

When Sorelli told him, in the spring of 1928, that she was expecting a baby, he hugged her, and kissed her, and told her she could use Philippe’s name for the child, if she wanted.

She smiled at him, her eyes just a little damp, and told him he would want Philippe’s name for his own child.

(“You have as much right to it as I do,” he whispered, and squeezed her hand.)

Erik was a nervous wreck all through the pregnancy, worried something would happen to Sorelli, because she was far from being a young mother, worried the baby would inherit his face, but in the end there was no need to worry, on either count.

Philomena Constance O’Raghallaigh was born in late October in 1928, with a perfect face, and her mother’s eyes, and named for the man who could have been her father, in a kinder world.

* * *

Raoul knew even then, even at seventeen (knew even at fifteen), that Erik and Sorelli were both his brother’s lovers. He didn’t care, the right or the wrong of it, because it was what he knew and because they both made Philippe happy.

One of his last clear memories of his brother is of him kissing Erik in Christine’s kitchen, that morning before they went up the mountain to meet Lynch.

He pretended to be reading the newspaper, but he was smiling behind it.

* * *

He has always been relieved that his own son did not come early like he did, but went to full-term, and a little over it. He doesn’t think he could have borne it if he had been told his little boy was unlikely to live.

1 September 1934. The day he became a father. The day he first cradled Philippe Ruairí in his arms.

(They call him Ruairí, but he always signs both of his names, his own honour to the uncle he never knew.)

When Christine was sleeping, after her ordeal, he sat down by the fire with his tiny boy in his arms, wrapped up in blankets, just his face and one little hand free, that hand free only because he kept pulling it from his wraps no matter how Raoul tried to tuck it in. And Raoul traced his finger over those soft knuckles, and it was then that the tears he’d been fighting all day welled in his eyes, then when he didn’t have Erik to keep him distracted, to hug him as if it would keep all of his pieces from coming apart.

(They had not spoken of who was missing, of who the baby would be named after.)

And the tears came, as he held his son close, and he let himself think of Philippe, let himself ache for him to be there, the ache he had been fighting all day alongside the worry and the fear.

“I wish you could meet him,” he whispered, to both Philippes, the one in his arms and the one long gone, and the baby whimpered against his chest, as if he knew of the grief in his father’s heart.

Raoul swallowed, and kissed his little boy’s forehead, and promised, then and there, that he would always keep him safe.

* * *

He remembers that long journey back to Dublin, hardly being able to breathe at all. Who was driving them? Someone Christine knew, someone who could be trusted. Sorelli had gone on the train, with Phi—with the coffin carrying Philippe, playing the part of the grieving widow, though it wasn’t playing, not really. And he was in the back seat of the car, all of this pressure in his chest and most of it not from the wound, feeling outside of his own body, not feeling very much of anything at all.

The two solid points, reminding him this was real – Christine’s hand wrapped around his own, Erik’s fist, clenched in his lap, his face as pale and ravaged as Raoul felt.

* * *

One of his favourite photographs sits on his desk. Philippe and Sorelli, February 1916. Him in his Volunteers uniform, a Boer hat casting an aspect of knowing imperiousness to his face, tall and proud, a revolver at his hip and hand resting just above it. Her, her Irish Citizen Army uniform, and the trousers was one of Philippe’s tailored to fit, her high leather boots, hair pinned back and face set, dressed for battle, dressed to lead men, a broad-brimmed hat shading her face.

The finest picture of a couple he has ever seen.

Beside it there is another one. September 1918, at the beach. Philippe and Sorelli and Erik lying in the sand, each of them laughing, Philippe’s hand shading his face from the sun. It was Brittas Bay and there are the grassy mounds behind them, and it was taken with Erik’s Ensign Deluxe, and he knows that because he was the one who took it after Erik showed him how to use the camera, and he felt so proud, his first time take a photograph.

Another one, he and Philippe in a photography studio, surrounded by books. He was about seven, so Philippe was twenty-nine, each of them dressed in their best, because once or twice a year Philippe would insist they have their photograph properly taken. He never did ask why.

(He wishes now he had.)

Ones, too, of him with Christine, him with Ruairí, the three of them together. Christine and Erik and little Connie, not so little now, all grown up. One that Ruairí was obsessed with when he was small, of Philippe and Casement in the Congo, sitting in wicker chairs under a tree, probably in Boma, both of them dressed in white so that Casement’s beard looks twice as dark, twice as conquistadorial, and Philippe just looks so _young_ , his hair seeming twice as light, a little long around his ears.

It is, he thinks, one of the only photos he has of Philippe without those webbing lines around his eyes, put there from time, and worry.

(Put there, mostly, by him.)

* * *

He was one of the first to know, about bringing Casement back. Ruairí had gone to England, to do something he couldn’t talk about, highly classified, and Raoul figured it was some sort of government work, so he didn’t press him.

The call came through late at night. Raoul answered it, groggy with sleep, Christine pale beside him because neither of them have ever expected night-time calls to bring good news. And he did think something had happened, with the way Ruairí was crying on the line.

“We did it, Dad,” and through the tears there was a smile in his voice. “We’ve dug Casement up.”

(Like something illegal, he said when he got home the next evening on the flight that carried the coffin, and by then the world knew. An exhumation in the prison grounds under cover of darkness, the guards and prison doctor, and he saw some of the prisoners trying to watch out the windows with cracks of mirrors. But they dug Casement up from where he’d been buried in that unmarked grave in quicklime, and when Raoul asked if they were sure they had the right bones, Ruairí nodded, and his smile was grim. “Very tall,” and he swallowed, “and there was still some of his hair.”)

* * *

He knew, too, knew long before he ever found the stash of old letters, that Casement had been Philippe’s lover, once. They were dear friends when Raoul knew him, but in the Congo, and for a little while after, they had been a good deal more. And Raoul knows, because he asked Philippe about it, told him that he knew though he was only three-quarters certain. It was the winter of 1920, only a few months before—Before, and Philippe swallowed, and took a sip of his brandy, and told him. He has always been happy that he asked.

He found the letters a few years after it all, not long before he married Christine. Saw Casement’s to Philippe, saw Philippe’s addressed to “Roddie”, and there on the floor of his brother’s old room he lay down and wept.

He has read the letters, all of them, over the years. And it felt a little like prying, but he couldn’t help himself, not when these were pieces of his brother, not when these were some of the last things he had of him.

He keeps the letters safe, and he has not decided yet what he will do with them at the end of his day, but he would never consider destroying them. They are too precious. And maybe, someday, the world will understand.

* * *

He remembers the Rising. Remembers being in his hospital bed, and the pain in his belly if he moved too fast, and the shooting outside, the tit-tit-tit of bullets, cracking boom of shells. And Philippe holding his hand, Philippe smiling at him, telling him stories when he woke, even though he was so pale, so tired himself, even though he must have been scared half to death, for Raoul, and for his friends out there fighting, and maybe he was wishing he could join them, could stand and die with them.

Raoul never asked. Maybe he would have, given more time.

He remembers hearing the names, MacDonagh, MacDiarmada, Plunkett, and realising that these were men he knew, these were Philippe’s friends who had come to the house, and Plunkett always wore those little spectacles, and they would talk to Philippe in his study.

These men who were Philippe’s friends, and they were dead because they had been executed, because they were trying to free Ireland.

(That was when he knew he would someday fight for his country, take up arms against the English, for Philippe and his friends if for no one else.)

That Erik, who used to bring him sweets and tell him stories when he came to see Philippe, had almost died and was now being sent to prison in Wales. That Sorelli, _Sorelli_ , who was like a sister to him, who he helped to rehearse her lines for plays and she told him he was the best assistant, that Sorelli who he thought would marry Philippe and become part of the family was in prison too…

He hated it. Hated every minute of it.

He was never so happy as the day Sorelli was released, and came to stay with them.

* * *

(In all of his nightmares after the Rising, Philippe was the one getting shot.)

(In all of his nightmares after 27 March 1921, Philippe was the one getting shot. But it was not a nightmare anymore, because that was what happened.)

* * *

Hundreds of cards came after Philippe’s funeral. Hundreds of them, from people he had helped, people who had known him, people who thought it was the very highest honour, to have died for Ireland.

He could not reply to them. He was far too ill. But Christine read him each one at his insistence, and he wept to know his brother had mattered to so many people.

He kept each one and when it was all over he replied to them. His duty to his brother.

* * *

He did not, at first, realise that he had been shot.

Christine’s face hovering above him, pale and blurred with tears. Sorelli so close, sharp pain, a pressure high in his chest as she pressed down and he retched, gagged on it, the room tilting, turning, upside down and Christine’s shoulder beneath his head the only thing he knew and he closed his eyes and leaned into her, leaned in, that pain burning through him, and he was so cold, so cold…

Philippe’s voice, Philippe’s hands half-swallowed in the pain and he’d know them anywhere, know them, and he opened his eyes for to see his brother and he smiled at him, smiled so he’d know he was alright, know it was nothing, just a scratch, but when he went to tell him that Philippe shushed him and he couldn’t remember seeing his brother so pale before, the lines so deep around his eyes, so deep…

He raised his hand for to trace them, touch them, and Philippe twined their fingers, and held on tight.

* * *

They had not wanted him to attend Philippe’s funeral, but he had to. He _had_ to. His brother’s funeral. Where else could he be?

Hardly a week since he himself had been shot. It didn’t matter the risk he might collapse. That he could burst his stitches (again) and start bleeding. That he wasn’t well enough to be on his feet _at all_. His brother was dead. He had to go to his funeral. How could he ever live with himself otherwise?

Christine made sure he was bundled up well, his left arm still strapped to his chest, and he leaned on a cane, Christine on one side of him, Sorelli on the other should he need to be steadied. A damp, miserable grey day, Erik carrying the coffin with men Raoul can’t remember, his face pale and eyes rimmed red, but he did not cry, would not let himself cry, so Raoul didn’t either.

He saved his tears for after. After, when he collapsed into bed and didn’t leave it for three week, and didn’t sleep much either, even when his fever came back, even when the threatening infection flared in his wound.

Sleeping meant watching Philippe choking on his own blood again.

* * *

Appropriate, really, to bury Casement in Glasnevin, when Philippe’s grave is only a few rows away.

* * *

Philippe stayed in bed all day the day they executed Casement. Philippe hadn’t wanted to tell him, but he had to because everyone was talking about it, and around noon that day Sorelli came down to the kitchen and had a cigarette and made tea. He hadn’t been able to eat all day, not when he knew what was happening, not when that word _hanged_ seemed to contain so much. So when Sorelli was making tea, he went up to Philippe’s room. The curtains were pulled so that it all seemed cast a little pink with the sunlight filtering through, and Philippe was lying there on his back with his eyes closed.

He didn’t stir when Raoul crawled into bed beside him (and Raoul was twelve then, almost thirteen, and starting to get tall) and pressed himself close. But when Raoul took his hand, Philippe wrapped his arm around him and drew him closer, and his cheeks were damp with tears.

That was when Raoul started to cry, and the two of them stayed there like that until they cried themselves to sleep, safe in each other’s arms.

The next morning Philippe got up, and made breakfast, and read the newspaper with the stern look he wore when he was upset, and it was almost as if the world could be normal again.

* * *

That day on Banna Strand with Philippe. Easter 1920. Cold and damp, the waves crashing on the shore, wind whipping around them, tearing the tears from their eyes.

Philippe pale and gaunt. The wound in his arm had gotten infected, he was carrying it in a sling. And his skin burned with fever in contrast with the cold when Raoul took his hand, but the tears in his eyes had nothing to do with the wind or the pain or the cold.

And Raoul knew he was wondering, if he had been there that Good Friday in 1916, if it would have made any difference.

(Raoul does not hold his appendix responsible for Casement’s death. That would be ridiculous. But he cannot pretend he has not wondered if Casement might have been saved, if Philippe had been here.)

(A part of him agrees with Monteith—kinder, to have let Casement drown in the waters of Banna Strand when his malaria flared, as he almost did, than to have saved him to be sent to the scaffold.)

(When Raoul went to Banna Strand, alone, in 1926, he sat down on the sand and closed his eyes, and conjured up Philippe’s face as it was that day, gaunt and pale and shadowed with the stubble of his beard, and with his brother in his mind’s eyes he whispered, “we’ll get him back,” a breath, “I promise.”)

* * *

How it tormented Philippe, that Casement should lie in a prison grave in British soil.

How Raoul knew, that summer of 1916, that there was something different in his brother, something he was powerless to fix, that could never be the same again.

* * *

(He hopes, deep down, that this day’s work, this funeral, can finally bring peace to his brother’s memory.)

* * *

He couldn’t stay in school. How could he? Knowing Philippe was out there fighting, for him and for Irish freedom. Knowing that the other boys knew. And most of them kept quiet, most of them didn’t say anything. Liam just squeezed his hand every time there was news of another killing, another Republican dead.

But it was the ones who didn’t keep quiet, the ones who taunted him with words like _murderer_ , _fool_ , _killer_ , because they had never liked him, never liked him and the freedoms Philippe gave him, the things he had that they didn’t. So they whispered these things to him when there was no one listening, and he couldn’t stand it anymore, he couldn’t _stand_ it. He was only still there because Philippe wanted him to be safe. What good was it being safe when he had to listen to that? What good was it being safe when out there Philippe could be dying?

(Some of them had brothers who had died fighting the Germans. That Philippe was fighting the _English_ , fighting the men their brothers had stood alongside, galled them.)

The night Foster called Philippe a murderer and a homosexual was the night Raoul broke his nose for him, and the night he knew he would have to go.

(It wasn’t that Foster might have known, he was just trying to be hurtful, trying to slander a man better than his brother ever could have been. And Raoul didn’t tell him that he didn’t care if his brother was a homosexual or not, that he was glad to know he loved Erik, that it was a _comfort_ to know there would always be someone at Philippe’s back to keep him safe. How could he tell him that? Foster would never have understood.)

* * *

After he was shot, after he woke, he couldn’t find Philippe, couldn’t find him for the longest time, but then he was there.

There every time he opened his eyes, one hand soft in his hair, other hand in his, his voice low, a whisper. The blankets were so heavy, weighing him down, and he thought there should be pain but he couldn’t find it, too tired to really hear Philippe’s words, only know he was there, and that was enough.

He thinks he told him that, told him he was glad, and a tear trickled from Philippe’s eye, and he pressed his face close, and it was easier to sleep, easier with Philippe beside him, but why Philippe was crying, he couldn’t know.

* * *

One time he woke, and Philippe wasn’t there, only Christine. And she looked so pretty, in the dim light, her fingers gentle squeezing his, and he thinks he told her that, how pretty she was. And she smiled at him, a thin watery smile, and said she was glad to hear it, and that Philippe would be back soon.

He remembers their whispers: “…sorry for…bleeding on your floor…” “…doesn’t matter, I promise…” “Have I—” and she kissed him, and her lips were so soft, so sweet on his, and he gasped into her mouth, and closed his eyes, and it didn’t matter that his heart was racing in his chest, didn’t matter until she pulled back and kissed his forehead and there were tears damp on her cheeks. “…didn’t…get you flowers…”

“You will,” she whispered, “you will.”

And he closed his eyes, her fingers soft on his cheek, as she sang him back to sleep.

* * *

(He buys her flowers once a month, to earn that kiss she gave him all those years ago.)

* * *

He prefers to remember Philippe tall. On summer evenings and cool spring mornings and bundled up against the autumn chill. Prefers to remember him happy, well. Prefers to remember him by the fire, and in the garden.

Prefers to remember him at his best, not bleeding to death on Christine’s table.

* * *

“…that that man is in heaven, I hope, with all the other Irishmen who have given their lives for our country.”

De Valera finishes his speech, and the crowd applauds, and all Raoul can see through his blurred vision is Philippe’s face. Philippe’s soft smile, and he knows that wherever he is, Philippe is at peace, with all the others too.

He takes one last look at the coffin before they start lowering it down, and closes his eyes against it.

* * *

It was years before Erik could speak at all of Philippe’s death. Years before he could open his mouth to tell about it, and have words come, not just a moan that made him close his eyes against the pain.

The Tans were watching for them. MacThomáis was already dead, the information wrong. The shooting started before they were ready. The bullet clipped Erik’s forehead and he was half-blind with blood. Malley’s arm was bleeding but he was still firing. They sheltered behind a stone wall. The shots cracked flakes of stone that tore their faces. Erik thought he heard Philippe moan and his shots faltered. A wet choking cough beside him but he couldn’t see, still firing. Philippe still firing. Malley still firing. So much dust he couldn’t see. Malley dropping his gun, no more rounds. Philippe stopped, lying flat in the dirt, gasping. Erik down beside him, trying to stop the bleeding, two holes, belly and chest, but Philippe just shook his head, shook his head.

They heard the Tans go, the exchange of voices, but all Erik could see was Philippe’s face pale in the moonlight.

Malley helped him lift Philippe onto his back and ran for the doctor. Erik carried Philippe home.

* * *

Raoul woke to voices, rushed and fast, words indistinguishable. Woke to light bright around the edges of the door. Woke alone.

His heart pounding. Something wrong, something terrible.

The voices. Erik, “…ambushed…Malley the doctor…” Sorelli, “…get him down here…” Christine, “…towels…water…” And a voice so faint he couldn’t make out who it belonged to, “…the priest…”

The cold creeping fear in his chest. Erik, half-hysterical, “You don’t need the priest!”

Someone hurt, someone hurt, and only one person could make Erik sound like that.

He was on his feet before he had time to think, the room swaying, tilting, but he didn’t care, didn’t care. Philippe was hurt, _Philippe_ , he had to be with his brother, he had to.

He lurched to the door, stumbled, caught the handle to steady himself, and jerked it open.

His head spun when he saw what lay beyond.

Erik, covered in blood, leaning over someone stretched on the table, hands pressed to their chest, their belly. Christine gathering towels, Sorelli with a syringe and a bottle of morphine.

Hair. That blond hair, the same as his. Philippe’s hair.

The colour all drained from the room, the voices faded, and he swayed, swayed, and the next he knew he was sitting in a chair, sitting in a chair beside the table, watching the blood well up between Erik’s fingers, listening to his brother gasp.

He fumbled for Philippe’s hand and squeezed it. The answering squeeze was so weak he almost didn’t feel it.

“…be in bed…” Philippe’s voice faint and he looked into his brother’s face, bone pale, the blood smeared over his cheek, from his lips, those eyes so blue, so blue looking back at him, and he shook his head.

“Need to be with you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with the tightness in his throat, the tears blurring his eyes that he tried to blink away. Philippe’s lips twitched, just slightly, as if he might smile, and then he coughed and frothy blood dribbled down his chin.

“Erik,” that voice fainter than a moment before, and Raoul saw the tears that shone in Erik’s eyes, his lips twisted, as he looked at Philippe, “stop. No…point.”

“Philippe—”

But Philippe shook his head. “Dying…anyway. Feel it. Just let…me see you.” Each word an effort, his breaths getting shallower, and Raoul wanted to tell him to stop, tell him to save his strength and let Erik help him, but when he opened his mouth the words wouldn’t come only a moan of pain, and then Philippe was whispering again. “Straighten…my legs.” And Raoul’s blood was cold, cold when he saw the stricken look on Sorelli’s face, everything fallen away, when he saw that Philippe’s legs were already straight.

The bullet that punched through his belly had shattered his spine.

It was all Raoul could do not to be sick.

But Philippe was whispering again, whispering, “S’relli,” and Sorelli was at his side, smiling through the tears, and she kissed his cheek and stroked back his hair, and Erik kissed his face, and Philippe was whispering to them, telling them he loved them, and Raoul couldn’t see this, couldn’t listen, closed his eyes against it as if that would make it not real, and Christine’s arms came around him and he leaned into her, Philippe’s grip so faint in his.

And he heard, “Christine,” and her answering whisper, “I’m here,” and Philippe’s breathing ragged, “take care…my brother…” And Raoul felt her nod. “I will, I promise.”

“Raoul,” and he blinked his eyes open again, blinked his eyes open in time to see the tear that trickled from the corner of Philippe’s eye, his brother smiling at him, eyelids flickering, “Be good.” So faint, so faint, and Raoul couldn’t speak, his throat too tight, could only nod and kiss Philippe’s hand and try to smile at him, and it was enough, it must have been enough, because Philippe nodded, and his eyes flickered shut, and he sighed.

Raoul squeezed his fingers tighter, and lay his head on Philippe’s shoulder, and listened to the gurgling of each breath, each wheezing cough and shallow little gasp, listened to the blood dripping to the floor, listening to the pounding of his own heart, and everything was just blank and hollow, Philippe’s fingers so slack, so cold in his.

And when the gasping stopped, when there was just the softest sigh, and silence, he willed himself to sleep. To sleep, and never wake up.

* * *

The doctor arrived too late to save Philippe’s life, too late to do anything except check for a pulse that wasn’t there, and stitch the cut above Erik’s eye as the tears trickled down his face, and find that Raoul had burst his stitches, and was bleeding through his bandages.

(Raoul hadn’t even noticed. He thought the blood was Philippe’s.)

* * *

Erik spent that night sitting at Philippe’s side where he still lay on Christine’s kitchen table, covered up to his chin with Erik’s big coat, wounds hidden, his eyes closed and body still, silent in death. Raoul didn’t see it, back in bed half-conscious with his wound re-stitched, the fresh bleeding stopped, Christine holding his hand, her head on the pillow beside his, Sorelli at his other side, her face blank and a gun in her hand.

Sorelli told him about Erik afterwards, when he was well. How Erik had sat there all night with Philippe, in case the Tans came, in case they tried to take his body. And though Raoul didn’t see it, he can picture it as clearly as if he were there. Erik, a gun in each hand, his clothes torn and stiff with Philippe’s blood, with his own. His face white beneath a smear of blood, eyes red-rimmed and burning. Erik, ready to fight, ready to follow Philippe in death, if he must. To keep them safe.

* * *

They still have the table. The table that Philippe died on. Christine tried to persuade him to burn it, but something always stayed his hand, something that said such a thing should be kept, as a relic. It is covered with a white tablecloth, and there are purple flowers on it, and photographs. Himself and Philippe. Himself and Christine and Ruairí. Philippe and Erik and Sorelli. All of them happy, all of them young. And if someone lifted the tablecloth, and knew where to look, they could still see the bloodstains, could still see the place where Philippe’s life bled into the table, where Raoul’s own life tried to.

A macabre thing to keep, maybe. But it reminds him of what they fought for, reminds him of what they lost.

And he could never bear to part with it, when it is a silent memorial to his brother.

* * *

His brother died because of him. Of that he has no doubt. If he had not been shot, Philippe would not have been so tired. He would not have been weakened from giving blood to him. He would have been looking after himself.

Was it that he was reckless? Was it that he was slow? Did he feel guilty that he could not protect Raoul?

Raoul can never have an answer, will never know. What he does know is that Philippe died, and it was, in some way, his fault.

* * *

The guns boom their volley, in tribute to the man finally laid to rest, and Raoul sees Philippe behind his eyes, and feels the tear that trickles down his cheek.


End file.
